12 Landscape Design Ideas for Mid-Century Modern Homes

The Mid-Century Modern Garden

Postwar mid-century modern homes were designed to blend indoor and outdoor living. Homeowners could view their gardens through floor-to-ceiling windows and easily interact with the outdoor environments through sliding glass doors and patios level with interior floors. Landscaping for these homes was - and remains - clean and uncomplicated, with an emphasis on hardscape and the pleasures of outdoor living.

In the 1950s and 1960s, home builders like Joseph Eichler and the Alexander Construction Company made Modernism accessible to the masses - building post-and-beam tract homes with exuberant, often exaggerated rooflines in Southern and Northern California. Mid-century modern homes can be found elsewhere, like Sarasota, Florida; Austin, Texas; Durham, North Carolina; and Australia.

Contemporary Mid-Century Landscape Design

A renewed interest in the era and iconic architects like John Lautner, A. Quincy Jones, and Jones and Emmons has made mid-century modern homes hot properties. Many new homeowners restore these architectural gems, while others update them to meet contemporary needs and lifestyles. 

Rather than installing the standard lawn, some owners and landscape designers use outdoor spaces to echo the homes' architectural and interior aesthetic. Trees and shrubs are considered sculptural elements, while planting beds repeat geometric lines. One-story mid-century modern homes often have atriums - central courtyard patios - which are true outdoor rooms. New homeowners resurrect atriums that were covered up or obscured in the 1970s or later.

Not everyone has the same solution for a mid-century modern home, and these 25 beautiful and very different Modernist landscape designs prove it.

Atrium Escape

Mid-century modern homes in California were often designed for the Mediterranean climate. Atriums were built at the entrance or in the center of the home. Lee Ann Marienthal Gardens created this Orange County landscape with an emphasis on mid-century and Asian design. An appealing escape, the atrium features boulders, a pond with waterfall, a flagstone patio and pond surround, and shade-tolerant plants like Japanese maples. Marienthal's team installed plants like star jasmine to hide the utilities, Coleonema pulchellum 'Sunset Gold', anemone 'Honorine Jobert', and Australian violet.

Postwar Pad in the Pacific Northwest

Not all mid-century homes were built on large, luxurious, expansive lots. Many were modest homes built in subdivisions, with limited square footage and on petite plots. Northwest Native Landscapes used a combination of hardscape, sharp angles, and plants with textural details for a small postwar home in Portland, Oregon. Soft plants contrast with the home's angles and geometric shapes, keeping in mind seasonal interest. Colorful plants used include blue fescue grass (Festuca glauca) and conifers. The yard and porch provide intimate spaces, achieved with horizontal wood-slat fences that repeat the lines of the house.

Sustainable Eichler

The owners of an Eichler home in Northern California redesigned their landscape to incorporate sustainable features and add natives and drought-tolerant plants in cool shades like greens and blues to evoke a sense of calm, simplicity, and order. The plant selection emphasizes texture and includes a variety of ornamental and native grasses, olive trees, and drifts of Manzanita.

Designed by one of the owners of the design firm Building Lab and his landscape designer wife, the landscape features a sloping front yard that connects it with the surrounding hills. They also got back to the home's roots by adding an entry courtyard patio surrounded by horizontal wood fencing. Among its sustainable features are a Toro drip irrigation system, salvaged fencing, and a permeable gravel driveway.

Oakland Eichler

While its good bones remained, a 2,200-square-foot Eichler home in Northern California's Oakland Hills needed to be fully restored. Among other things, Beckner Contracting brought back the home's trademark carport and entry atrium. Growing in the wall-hugging planters are agapanthus (right) and delicate shoots of bamboo against the entry wall. The home is one of just 48 Eichlers in the Sequoyah Hills tract, nicknamed "the lost Eichlers of the Oakland hills”.

Boston Coolidge

Many mid-century homes are private in the front: they lack front porches and you can't see what's going on inside. The backs of the house are often floor-to-ceiling glass, open to the yard. Boston-based Flavin Architects updated a home by architect Robert Coolidge—a contemporary of the famous Modernist Walter Gropius. Viewed from the back, the home features a two-level yard, each with a private walled patio that offers intimacy and outdoor living. 

Linear Beauty

A modern home in Portland, Oregon, built by Don Tankersley & Co. and designed by Situ Architecture, emphasizes natural materials and a linear design. Planting design, by Michael Schultz Landscape Design, is clean and Asian influenced with bonsais in wide, low pots. Accent illumination is by Oregon Outdoor Lighting. 

California Cantilever

You'll find numerous mid-century modern custom-designed homes and subdivisions in Southern California's San Fernando Valley. Jeremy Taylor Landscapes used Brazilian ipe for a Studio City pool deck. The bench is made of poured-in-placed concrete. Beneath the cantilevered patio cover is a rescued fireplace: an original near-mint 1960s Majestic rescued curbside at remodel. 

The colorful plant palette includes aeonium 'Blushing Beauty', yellow New Zealand flax, orange kangaroo paw, and blue chalk sticks senecio.

Geometric Layout

Once neglected and overrun by weeds, the front yard of a mid-century home in Northern California received a smart makeover by Dig Your Garden Landscape Design that employs a geometric design. Both hardscape and softscape elements are evenly spaced; the geometric layout echoes the lines of the home.

Just Add Color

Exactly Designs livened up a mid-century house near Detroit with orange exterior trim, motel-style chairs, and vivid green grass. Low-growing shrubs in house-hugging beds don't block the view from the inside. Designer Elin Walters added fun architectural details like metal roofline rods, rectangular concrete planters, and modern address numbers.

Santa Cruz Mid Mod

Pea gravel is a popular hardscape material for contemporary and mid-century modern updates. It's drought tolerant, permeable, inexpensive, and colors complement natural materials used on the homes' exteriors. Designed by Verdant Landscape Architecture of Santa Cruz, California, this backyard reflects the home's simplicity.